Virtualization Blog

Archive for the ‘VoIP’ Category

In our environment we use promiscuous mode in order to record calls between phones. In order to configure the VOIP you’ll need to follow the following steps:

Define a physical switch that will be your VOIP switch. In this switch you’ll need to define one port configured with port mirroring (span port). The span port is a port that all of the telephony traffic will be duplicated to it. In our environment we use CISCO 2960G switch for the VOIP.

Open the Cisco Network Assistant and configure a new site, after that add your Cisco switch to the system.

Go to Configure > Switching > SPAN. Make sure you are on the right device, Keep the session number on default and configure the source ports (the traffic from these ports will be copy to the destination port) as ‘both’ (port 1-4) and the destination port as destination (Port 5).

Click OK.

Connect the phones into the VOIP switch which you defined in the step above.

Make sure that in your ESX one physical network adapter is connected to hub while the other physical network adapters connected to your LAN switch.

I wanted to share with you a problem which affected us greatly and caused a lot of problem. I am hoping it could help you in case you are suffering the same problem.

Problem We have installed a new Lab Manager 4 environment. Our environment includes several ESX servers version 4 update 1. Our working method is to work with a large number of configurations at the same time, therefore we use fencing. In addition, each configuration includes a few virtual machines with two network adapters.

We have mapped the second network adapter in each virtual machine which had two network adapters to work with Promiscuous Mode, but we have noticed that it didn’t actually worked. As part of our troubleshooting, we deployed an unfenced configuration which includes the same servers and the Promiscuous Mode worked perfectly.

In order to solve this issue, we have taken out the second network adapter from the fencing by changing the second network adapter (in every virtual machine which has 2 network adapters) in the vCenter server into our unfenced network adapter that was defined with Promiscuous Mode. Sounds good? Not Quite… The new problem was that after that change , effective immediately another vCenter process started which undo the change that we have made, and left the second network adapter unconnected.

Solution After consulting with VMware engineering support, we were asked to update a certain record in the lab manager’s database which dismisses the monitoring of the vCenter server from the lab manager’s DB.

Please be aware that this solution is highly risky; please make sure you have taken a full and updated backup of your lab manager’s database. If you would like to cancel the monitoring of the vCenter from the lab manager server, please follow the instructions below:

UPDATE config SET VALUE=’0′ WHERE name=’NicPortgroupChangedOutsideConfigCondition’ AND CAT=’Reactions’

Promiscuous is defined as distributed or applied without order. It means the same in the world of information technology. When a network adapter is in promiscuous mode it accepts all network packets whether they are intended for the specific machine or not.

Normally a node on the network will check the network packet before accepting to make sure it is the intended recipient. Promiscuous mode can be used for many things, such as troubleshooting network problems, software problems, recovering passwords, VoIP recording etc.